Another security flaw has been found in Microsoft Internet Explorer. reports have abounded all over the Internet; here’s an extract from Richard Wray’s article in the Guardian (full text here):
Users of Microsoft’s Internet Explorer have been warned of a flaw that could let hackers gain access to their computers and steal personal data, and told them to swap to a rival browser.
The flaw was spotted last week when hackers started attacking users of IE 7. The flaw, however, has also been found in earlier versions of Microsoft’s browser, IE 5 and IE 6.
Because IE is used by seven out of every ten computers in the world, the flaw is potentially very serious.
Protect yourself by updating your Internet security settings (set them to High), using your computer as a non-admin user or even better, use a different browser like Firefox until Microsoft issues a patch to cure the problem.
Update: Microsoft’s Security Advisory page offers a workaround.
Update : Emergency over. A fix has been issued here. Download and apply it. (Thanks to the ever-vigilant Steve Beard for alerting me to this at 01:00.).